As summer rolls around and school lets out, many art students’ thoughts naturally drift to after-school careers. What exactly can you do with your degree? You’ve all heard that stereotype about art careers being unrealistic and unprofitable, but don’t let the rumors scare you. If anything, an art degree grants you incredible flexibility to choose from wide-ranging options in a variety of fields. We’ve done some research into the career opportunities open to students in fashion merchandising.

Fashion merchandising is a dream job for many people. With a fashion degree in your hands, you have plenty of options that promise to tie you closely to the fashion industry. There are plenty of careers that will keep you in touch with the heartbeat of fashion world.

Fashion Purchasing – this role is a crucial one that requires great sensitivity to the current trends and details in the fashion industry. Actually, it also requires a certain amount of insight into the future trends of the fashion industry. Buyers must always be one step ahead of the game and constantly aware of the ever-changing face of popular styles. Purchasers must pull from a complex mix of sources to help them decide what and how much to buy during each retail cycle: from knowledge of fashion history, from market trends, from psychology, and from their own intuition.

Fashion Marketing – fashion marketing is about advertising, but there are subtleties involved that make it a bit more complicated than that. You can’t simply throw a headband or a pair of jeans in the public’s face and expect to make the item an immediate smash hit. You must be attuned to the current trends happening, and connect what’s happening in the world of the fashion elite with the general public. Only by successfully considering both sides of the equation can a fashion marketer succeed.

Fashion Merchandising – a wide career field, the duties of a fashion merchandiser are a little bit of everything. In a broad sense, the goal is to highlight products in an engaging way that appeals to the consumer. Oftentimes, this involves working with a fashion buyer or taking on some of the roles of the buyer, and then designing store and mannequin layouts to showcase products most effectively.

Even in the midst of this financial crisis, there are options aplenty for those holding an art degree. Don’t let stereotypes scare you away-with degrees in fields such as photography, graphic design, and fashion merchandising, there really is an incredible amount of versatility that opens up an impressive number of options. If you have further questions about how to get these valuable degrees, just take a look around at Find Your Art School‘s offerings.